E3 2009: Dark Void Hands-on

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Delve into Capcom's rocket-propelled thrill ride.

By Patrick Kolan

We westerners are an easy lot to please, it seems. Just take a muscular, helmeted hero, give him a lot of guns and stick him in a murky futuristic setting to fight waves of faceless enemies using a cover system and plenty of grenades. That seems to be the shorthand approach to console third-person shooters these days – but Capcom's Dark Void does, in the very least, switch things up with a dose of rocket-packs and a good sense of flight and verticality.

In essence, the shooter tenements hold true; this is a game that borrows heavily from the standard gameplay elements of games like Gears of War and even titles like Mass Effect and Halo – three games that we hold in high regard. In that respect, it mostly does the right thing by mimicking things like colour schemes and texture work, as well as a Gears-like cover system and Mass Effect's robotic enemies.

At E3, this latest version has shown some marked improvement to the flight controls and combat, as well as AI and collision detection. The game's hero, Will, begins the demo by flying through a canyon on an alien planet, taking out enemy flying discs and turrets. It's a good way to introduce the free-wheeling flight mechanics – swooping in graceful arcs, hovering stationary in the air and then taking off again with a disconcerting flail of limbs. Clicking the right thumbstick allows you to do an evasive barrel roll, which is pretty handy, too.

This is what really crashed in Roswell.

However, you can land on just about any flat surface in the game, which is where the raw shooting element comes into play. In addition to twin upgradeable cannons mounted on Will's jetpack (upgradeable later in the game), you also have a few fairly standard weapons at your disposal. After working your way across the platform set into a cliff face, tossing grenades and dodging the blast radius of unstable robotic foes, you're confronted by the game's mind-bending verticality. The platforming in Dark Void involves not only controlled boosting upwards, but a far more interesting blend of context-sensitive auto-jumping.

To work your way up the tower of the room, you simply look in the direction of a ledge you want to land on, hit jump and off you go. The camera reorients to compensate for your perspective – which is cool but a little disorienting, given you land on the underside of the platform before pulling yourself onto the top surface. To keep things interesting, you also come under some enemy fire, keeping you on your toes.

All told, the E3 2009 showing of Dark Void reveals a title that's come a long way since its first showing – and each new version seems to refine the formula. Spiralling and screaming through the air is a heck of a lot of fun and the gun-play's pretty solid too, so we're definitely keen to see how this one pans out.